Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Investigative journalist Michael Hastings recently broke a story on BuzzFeed about an amendment that is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill. The amendment would “legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.” Hasting reported that the amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon. He says the “tweak” to the bill would “neutralize” two other acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—which were passed in order “to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.” Rep. Mark Thornberry (R, Texas) and Rep. Adam Smith (D, Washington) are co-sponsors of the bipartisan amendment.
Hastings says that “the new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public.” One Pentagon official who is concerned about the amendment told Hastings, “It removes the protection for Americans. It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.” The official added that there are “senior public affairs” officers in the Department of Defense who would like to “get rid” of the Smith-Mundt Act “and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
In a Mediaite piece last week, Josh Feldman wrote of how the US military has been looking for new ways to spread U.S. propaganda “on social media websites for a while now.” Feldman also made reference to an article that was published in Wired last July. In the article, Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine, Adam Rawnsley told of how the DoD “has been working on ways to monitor and engage in ‘countermessaging’ on social media sites like Twitter.”
According to Hastings, the Pentagon already spends about $4 billion dollars annually to “sway public opinion.”
Here’s something to chill you to the bone: Hastings reported that USA Today had recently published an article about the DoD having spent “$202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.” Well, it appears that the reporters who worked on the USA Today article were targeted by “Pentagon contractors, who created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in an attempt to discredit them.” (Read about that story here.)
One of Hastings sources on the Hill told him, “I just don’t want to see something this significant – whatever the pros and cons – go through without anyone noticing.” The source added that the law would allow “U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.”
Michael Hastings:
The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaigns is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment.
In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create “sock puppets” on social media outlets; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.
The upshot, at times, is the Department of Defense using the same tools on U.S. citizens as on a hostile, foreign, population.
Is this how we want our tax dollars being spent—to produce propaganda aimed at us Americans to sway public opinion?
SOURCES
Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban (BuzzFeed)
Congress May Reverse Ban On Domestic Distribution Of Propaganda Material (Mediaite)
Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine (Wired)
Misinformation campaign targets USA TODAY reporter, editor (USA Today)
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Best luck —
Elaine,
What are zombies? Don’t be a zombie.
Matt,
I remember those stories. Smear the whistleblowers and truth tellers. That’s one way the government warns other people it’s best to remain silent.
Elaine,
Valerie Plame was attacked because her husband reported that Iraq couldn’t have gotten any uranium. They couldn’t effectively attack her husband, so they went after her.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801172.html
Scott Ritter, who was the major U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq for years, said that Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. Then I saw a news report where he was accused of being a child molester.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11812.htm
Pentagon Contractor Admits To Perpetrating Online Smear Campaign Against USA Today Reporters
By Adam Peck on May 24, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/05/24/490237/pentagon-contractor-admits-to-perpetrating-online-smear-campaign-against-usa-today-reporters/
Excerpt:
In April, two USA Today journalists claimed they were the victims of a deliberate “reputation attack” after they wrote a series of stories about the Pentagon’s contracts with groups that specialize in the production of propaganda. Days after the journalists began speaking with officials at the Pentagon and other sources for the story, fake websites and social media accounts set up in the names of the two reporters were mysteriously registered and began trying to discredit the stories.
Camille Chidiac, the minority owner and former president of Leonie Industries, one of the consulting firms that works with the Pentagon and was featured prominently in USA Today’s reporting, took responsibility for the misinformation campaign. USA Today reports:
“I take full responsibility for having some of the discussion forums opened and reproducing their previously published USA TODAY articles on them,” he said a statement released by his attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta.
“I recognize and deeply regret that my actions have caused concerns for Leonie and the U.S. military. This was never my intention. As an immediate corrective action, I am in the process of completely divesting my remaining minority ownership from Leonie,” Chidiac said.
anon nurse,
I had heard about this story. I guess it’s okay to leak classified information for propaganda purposes–but not for the purpose of exposing government wrongdoing.
BTW, I’m sure the break will be brief.
*****
shano,
“Wow, the great things that could be done with that $4 billion a year. The Pentagon just flushes our tax dollars down the toilet.”
That’s $4 billion that we know about. Isn’t it interesting the essential things our politicians claim the government doesn’t have adequate money for when it can blow billions on propaganda?
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 08:32 AM EDT
WH leaks for propaganda film
The administration takes a break from its war on whistleblowers to provide classified information to filmmakers
By Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/wh_leaks_for_propaganda_film/singleton/